----- Original Message ----- From: "J. van Baardwijk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 1:54 PM Subject: Re: Evil Empire: the World leader in executions
> At 14:25 04-10-2002 -0400, Jon Gabriel wrote: > > >Not that it matters, but Jeroen has been dismissing people as "pro-Israel > >fanatics" in an effort to invalidate their viewpoints. > > More accurately, I have been labeling them as members of the pro-Israel > crowd, not as "pro-Israel fanatics". The fanatics are only a (hopefully > extremely small) subset of the pro-Israel crowd. > > > > >I felt that the foundation of his argument was based on a false > >assumption, so I proved it with help from Julia & Adam. But, as you say, > >it will most likely go nowhere. He's been proved wrong, but if previous > >precedent is any indication, probably won't admit it. :-) > > That is because I do not consider myself proven wrong. Could you help me understand your position. The OED was quoted as defining anti-Semitic as holding views hostile to Jewish people. You claim that anti-Semitic means holding views hostile to all Semites, including Arabs. It appears, for you to be correct, the OED must be wrong. Are you saying that the OED is wrong? If so, it appears that the rational for that is that you use the usual rules for determining the meaning of a compound words in the English language to derive the meaning of anti-Semite. But, it is a well know fact that English has a disproportional fraction of "rule breakers." The reasons for the definition of anti-Semite being one of those exceptions have been provided. Are you arguing that the definition of a word must follow the general rule, that there cannot be exceptions? Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
